Why don't we do the thing we want most to do?

Sittin' on the dock of the bed, wastin' time, readin' blogs, spacing out . . . and, Tinker to Evers to Chance, Dean's World to ZuDfunck to How to Save the World, I come upon this:

I am slowly dying of a strange and insidious disease. . . . You should not feel sorry for me, or console me, or reassure me. I have all the medicine needed to cure the disease quickly and completely. I am not taking it. So it might be more accurate to say I am slowly killing myself. I suspect my company of victims and sufferers of this disease is legion.

This disease goes by a number of names. My favourite, the one that sounds most harmless, is procrastination. . . . another name for the disease is cowardice, defeatism, "low self-esteem",or just plain debilitating fear. Fear of failure, certainly, but also to some extent fear of success, fear of knowing how much of your life you have squandered. It also masquerades as depression. Or is depression perhaps the root cause of the disease, or the result of the disease?

This is Dave Pollard, a Canadian (you can tell by his spelling) environmental philosopher, activist and writer. Go read his long post if you've ever hated yourself for squandering your life on what Stephen Covey calls the "urgent but unimportant" things (like blogsurfing) while the important projects, the things you know you were put on earth to do, lie there looking at you balefully, growing a scummy moss of reproach. Dave in turn has found a book called THE WAR OF ART: Break Through Your Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield:

He describes it more as an addiction than a disease. And like breaking a deadly and life-sapping addiction, procrastination/ resistance manifests itself in the clever excuses we make for ourselves, and in our craving for more, for the 'high' we get from doing things just when we have to, just in time, and only doing things when we have to. And also like addiction, it takes, he says, enormous inner strength and will to break it. One step at a time, knowing for the rest of your life you will be vulnerable to relapses, and will have to start the agonizing process to kick the habit all over again. No excuses, no sympathy, no yielding to the temptation even once -- the fight of your life, for the rest of your life. . . .

Naturally, Dave gets around to the B word:

My blog itself is, perhaps, the ultimate excuse -- it's important (almost as important as my Second Career), and it's urgent. It's also good writing practice, a good way to "think out loud" and clarify and organize my own thoughts and ideas. My wife describes my blogging as an addiction. Perhaps for me it is. Or perhaps it's the procrastinator's methadone -- much less harmful than the 'real' drug, but still addictive and debilitating, preventing you from getting on with your 'real' life.

Rather than say how totally I identify with this -- fifteen or twenty years ago, I would have -- I'm going to end this post on a subversive note.

According to "archetypal psychologist" James Hillman, who at some point dissolved my own suicidal feelings of frustration and failure into laughter, procrastination is a "disease" only from the point of view of the heroic ego, which believes it can and should control everything -- first discipline the self, then save the world. ("Enormous inner strength and will!" "The fight of your life, for the rest of your life!") Procrastination is one of the signs of the soul at work, undermining and sabotaging the grandiose aspirations of the hero-ego, perhaps so that something real can happen, or not happen, as it, not I, wish. In Hillman's work procrastination means uncountably many things to the soul. It's an intrinsic part of the work process, resisting the pen the way the knots in wood resist and redirect the chisel; it's like the dance of avoidance all animals do on the way to their most primal gratifications, building up the intensity of mating or fighting by postponing it. It's much like the way we turn red-faced and flee from the very person we've fantasized confessing our love to, or the way we eagerly look forward to going "home" and then sink into a ghastly regressive lethargy, binge-eating on our parents' couch (this is for you, Danny, and I'll find you a hilarious passage about it), because what the soul wants is something less literal than we think we want. And one of the things it wants, and loves, is its problems, which Hillman says are like heraldic emblems.

Hillman makes all these disgraces and humiliations all right by stepping outside the linear perspective of the striving ego and into the perverse perspective of the soul. He shows you that in fact, everything is just as it should be, that without the mortification of the block our work and our love would be two-dimensional and facile. Needless to say, he is a great opponent of antidepressants (for ordinary malaise, at least) and of the manic and heroic strains in American culture. I can't get at my books right now (friend sleeping in that room), but in the next few days I'll copy out a couple of startling passages. A Blue Fire (edited by Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul) is a good sampler of Hillman's work, and some of the ideas I've mentioned here can be found in The Myth of Analysis, InterViews and Re-Visioning Psychology.

- amba.

Comments

[Euan]

Great post - thanks!

[Ronni Bennett]

I suspect most of us fall somewhere in the middle of these two points of view, sometimes berating ourselves for procrastinating and at others, happy enough to go with whatever pleases us and damn the obligations - self-imposed or otherwise.

"In Hillman's work procrastination means uncountably many things to the soul. It's an intrinsic part of the work process...because what the soul wants is something less literal than we think we want..."

Good grief, yes. There is such a Puritan psyche in American culture that tells us we are slacking (if not sinning) when we are not being outwardly productive every waking moment. But I think it is in our idle time that our souls, too often ignored in our busy, busy lives, is doing what may be far more important work.

In times when I've been very busy, every moment of the day owed to responbility and obligation, I get testy before too long and I know then I need to be alone. Really alone - no music, no books, no cleaning house, no people, no blogging. I couldn't tell you what I do in that time, certainly nothing anyone would call useful. But I am renewed by those solitary hours, centered again and ready to re-enter the world which also serves the soul in its way too.

[Tamar]

This piece is very important and meaningful to me. I have been "suffering" so much from this. I do it alone, silently. This "forced sabbatical" has been the most challenging time in my life - it renders me more unproductive than I have ever been. I cling to my blog as if I was about to drown. I could have written three books by now - never mind the one that Danny is waiting for.

It has taught me what to expect when I will retire and prepared me to prepare myself!
I genuinely thank you, Amba, for this post - from the bottom of my heart.

[Danny]

This is one of those posts that I need to read again and again. You mean there may be another option than despising myself for all the things I'm not getting done? I love the idea of procrastination as some kind of "corrective lens" but then I worry that I'll use that theory to never move my butt. As I get older I'm starting to realize that it's not me that needs to change so drastically, just my belief that I NEED to change...

[amba]

Actually, Danny . . . first of all, the beating oneself up is a necessary part of the soul drama of procrastination, so it doesn't go away. But some of the toxicity and seriousness goes out of it when you see what's happening. And then the resistance actually becomes a little less powerful, a little more playful (though still painful). Rather than getting LESS done, you probably get MORE done, because of course the more you beat up on the soul the harder it resists, while if you kind of wink at it, it gets its fill and lets you work sooner . . . Anyway, none of us can accomplish all that we fantasize, and yet we can accomplish more than we ever dreamed. It's a paradox. Like I've said before, I love reading the journals of great novelists, because they've got these huge intimidating bodies of work and yet they virtually ALL spent incredible amounts of time procrastinating, indulging in their addictions, obsessing about destructive love affairs, panicking about money, and beating themselves up about all of it.

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Idle time is perhaps the single most necessary prerequisite for creativity. Of course, there's a difference between productive idleness within a context of self-discipline and self-defeating inertia.

Amba, thanks so much to you and all your commenters for this extremely valuable discussion. It motivates me to be more idle -- and more productive.

[Simon]

That was a great article, with great links to other sites. Alas, I didn't read the entire article before ordering The War of Art. It will likely join the other books on the shelf, fitting neatly into the category -- "gotta read these sometime".

Usually I feel better about myself when I complete items on my to do list, and feel worse about myself when I let play take precedence over useful work. However, I do enjoy the play at the moment much more than work at the moment.

Still reading. You blog a lot!